- Directed by Phillip Saville
- Written by Gerald Savory, Bram Stoker
- Stars Louis Jordan, Frank Finlay, Susan Penhaligon, Judi Bowker
- Run Time: 2 hours 31 minutes
Synopsis
Jonathan Harker is loading up the carriage, he’s off to Transylvania. He says goodbye to his fiancé, Mina. Mina will be staying with her mother and her sister, Lucy. He’s off! Credits roll.
Aboard the carriage, one of the men says it’s May 4th, the Eve of St. George, when all the evil things of the world take command. People have been giving Jonathan a ward against the evil eye. When the passengers hear the name Dracula, they all cross themselves and mutter, “Strigoi.” They tell him not to go. When he gets off the carriage, the woman gives him a cross on a chain to wear. They leave him alone in the wilderness; they refuse to wait.
Eventually, a carriage comes for him as promised. The silent coachman drives Jonathan the rest of the way to the big castle. Dracula opens the door and lets him in. Dracula carries in Jonathan’s heavy trunk as if it were empty. Dracula has already dined, but he has prepared a nice dinner for Jonathan. The plates are 400 years old and solid gold. Dracula asks about Carfax, the old house that he’s just purchased. The sun has begun to rise, so Dracula says they’ve talked enough for tonight, so he warns Jonathan to stay out of the rooms with locked doors. Dracula looks very human and acts very civilized.
Jonathan goes to bed but remembers to put that cross on first. The next evening, Dracula explains about the trouble with mirrors – one Jonathan is shaving with doesn’t reflect the Count, and he makes a joke out of it before he throws the mirror out the window. Dracula wants him to stay for a month to teach him better English. At night, he watches Dracula climb down the outside wall of the castle, moving the way a bat would.
Meanwhile, Mina, Lucy, and their mother go to their summer home. It’s the most bleak, grey, dingy summer home ever. Jonathan has written that he’ll be gone another month, and they all worry about him. Lucy has received two marriage proposals: one from Dr. Seward, and the other from Quincey Holmwood.
Jonathan, back in Transylvania, writes to Mina using shorthand, hoping that Dracula can’t read the letters. Dracula’s three wives show up and tease Jonathan. Dracula comes in and orders them away. He promises they can have Jonathan as soon as he’s finished with him. They whine that he never gives them anything, so Dracula brings them a baby to eat.
Dracula says Jonathan can leave, but there are wolves outside. Dracula then returns the coded letters that Jonathan wrote to Mina. Jonathan soon finds himself trapped but does manage to crawl down on the outside of the castle to Dracula’s wives’ secret sleeping room. He also finds Dracula, who lies in his coffin. Jonathan beats him with a shovel, but it doesn’t damage him. him. Dracula’s somewhat awake through the whole thing but cannot get up in the daylight.
Back in England, at Dr. Seward’s Purefleet Asylum, Mr. Renfield has been catching flies again. He plans to feed them to spiders– if he had spiders. Mina and Lucy see a ship out on the horizon in the storm, and it’s heading straight for the rocks. Sure enough, the ship sinks. The newspaper and the ship’s log say the ship had been haunted by a strange man before the crew all died mysteriously. They all wonder why Jonathan hasn’t written in over a month.
That night, Mina wakes up to find Lucy isn’t in their room. Lucy is sleepwalking up to the creepy old Carfax place beyond the cemetery. Mina finds Lucy in the graveyard with a mysterious man in black biting her neck. She gets a good look at Dracula’s face before he disappears. Lucy has bite marks on her neck now. Lucy and Dracula get together several more times over the following nights, and she doesn’t show much interest in her fiancée, Holmwood, anymore.
Dr. Seward notices from his office window that a bunch of boxes have been delivered to the abandoned abbey next door. Renfield’s been eating the flies recently, so he’s not getting any better. He wants a kitten next. Jonathan’s boss talks to Mina and explains that Jonathan is very sick, but that Mina can go to see him.
Dr. Seward comes over and examines Lucy, but he can’t find anything wrong with her to explain her malaise. Seward thinks he’ll call in his old professor from Amsterdam to help out with a diagnosis. Dr. Van Helsing soon arrives on the scene. He wants to know what’s on under her choker necklace. It’s the bite marks. He also noticed her fangs, which are pretty hard to miss. Each morning, Lucy gets sicker and weaker. Van Helsing tells Lucy to wear a necklace of garlic to bed each night.
That night, Lucy’s mother notices a bat flying outside Lucy’s window. She doesn’t like the smell, so she removes all the garlic. A wolf jumps through the window, giving the mother a fatal heart attack, but then the wolf turns into Dracula who finishes Lucy.
Dracula finally pays Renfield a visit. Renfield overpowers the guard and drinks some of his blood as Dracula watches.
Lucy is dying, but the marks on her neck have vanished overnight. Van Helsing notices that she doesn’t have a reflection in the mirror anymore, and her fangs have grown longer.
Two days after Lucy’s funeral, Mina and Jonathan have gotten married and now return home. Jonathan recognizes the cab driver immediately—it’s Dracula! Holmwood explains what happened in their absence. Seward and Van Helsing go to the Westenra family crypt and look for Lucy there. She’s gone, but they find a little boy with bite marks. Van Helsing explains about Nosferatu to Holmwood, who is skeptical. They watch Lucy turn into smoke in order to get back into her tomb in the daylight. They stake her and cut her head off. The group talks, and Jonathan explains about Dracula and Carfax, so they know who their enemy is.
The three men go to Carfax that night and poison 29 out of 50 of Dracula’s boxes of dirt using Consecrated Host. Holmwood gets a lead on the other 21 boxes. Meanwhile, smoke pours into Mina’s room that swirls and becomes Dracula. Mina goes to see Renfield the next day, and he notices the bite on her neck. Renfield then turns against Dracula, and Dracula kills him. Dracula then goes to Mina and lets her drink his blood. Van Helsing comes in in the middle of this and puts a stop to it.
They find and destroy more boxes of dirt. Dracula and the men meet, and he taunts them. Mina starts sticking up for Dracula, seeing his side of the story. She’s got little fangs by this time. The men go out for the final box of soil, which is back in Transylvania at Castle Dracula. On the road, at night, Mina can hear the laughing of Dracula’s other wives. They come for her, but Van Helsing uses more Consecrated Host to keep them at bay.
At first light, Van Helsing heads on to the castle, leaving Mina to sleep in the sunlight. He finds and kills the brides easily enough.
Meanwhile, we see gypsies loading the final boxes onto carts. Dracula is going to get away! Holmwood, Jonathan, and Seward catch up with the gypsies and shoot them all. One guy gets away with a carriage, and the case is on! The carriage makes it to Castle Dracula and goes inside. Holmwood gets there first, but he’s been shot and can’t do much. The others come in behind him. Jonathan and Van Helsing hop on the carriage and find Dracula in his box just as the sun sets. Van Helsing is a little too fast for him, and once staked, the fireworks go off.
Commentary
It’s really long, but it does follow the original novel much more closely than most other films. It tends to be slow moving, but that’s mostly due to sticking with the dialogue and ideas from the book. The video effects were extremely limited, but this was a BBC production of the 70s, so they aren’t too bad, considering. The sets, scenery, and costumes are all great, as the BBC knows how to do Victorian England better than anyone. Renfield is insane, but it’s a believable insane, not a comedy-relief giggler. Dracula is smooth and civilized here, handsome and seductive, not really monstrous in any way. Van Helsing is almost always a step ahead, and this is one of the only truly effective and intelligent portrayals of the character.
Frank Finlay, as Van Helsing, was so good at his job that he later fought space vampires in Lifeforce (1985), and Louis Jordan as Dracula was excellent as well. The others are fine, but these two really steal the show.
The story follows the book religiously, but in this version, Lucy and Mina are sisters and for some reason, the two characters of Lord Arthur Holmwood and Quincy Morris have become one man, Quincy Holmwood, who talks like a cowboy. Dracula’s hairy palms are shown in several scenes, which is a nice touch.
It doesn’t have much action, but if you are a fan of the original Bram Stoker Dracula novel, then this is the one to see.